New Year New 

If a Mergirl: Get some ear-pods for underwater casting, it's important to keep in touch with yourself in that way. Try not to zigzag and cancel the fear of braining yourself against the chiselled purses of younger maids

Always drink wine at lunch time, it’s French. Also have the full good time. Christmas is 

forever, think apocalypse ready. In dreams of being a handy woman, try for some fifties 

thing, a sweetheart neckline

Books are noble, poetry is telly. Make them and read them but never be them. You are only ever one reading away from wearing a beret. Keep your Kerouac in sandwich bags for cleanliness. Bohemia is literally bourgeois 

Supreme satisfaction from folding clothes into perfect rectangles. Housework is artform yet underrated. The happiness of a clean home, it’s not that bad. In the moment we are somewhere else, whipping up cosy like drugs

Clothe refugees in your old Topshop. Open your heart to the online community yet scorch ego like the plague. Socialise with anyone who can tolerate you and love with your full heart. Life is now a beautiful snow globe

Grief has the same secrecy 

as an empty tic tac box filled with

puddle water. The parachuting 

man we hid in the petrol cap 

of your Mum’s car, quick stolen, 

the handkerchief I buried in the trees.

I liked the embroidery. I like it now,

this grief and its stitches, it makes

me flower even through snot. Things

fly past the planet, roaring. I like

the axis, the counting down. Nostalgia

is a cutie, bean-filled Totoro.

The whirl of fur he lived in. His ancient

teeth that ripped me, the bad quality,

we went all over the world in love.

Paws are unshook hands- yet I'm shaken.

Don’t worry Dog, I’ll find you. In galaxies,
through death. I’ll always be your person.

In the pink room we have found

each other, you in the blue sling

and I deep in the dreams that

I have for you. It is raining post-

heatwave and I am glad your tiny

feet are cold as shells, my heart-

beat pressed up hard against

your ear. Nothing can touch us

now. Your duckling hair is real,

as you are- I never thought we’d

get this far. I had you in mind for

so long you’re still made up, an

unbuilt world. Sometimes you 

chirp and I realise you’re here,

hot little hands in a grip, how 

serious you are. When your eyes

open they are in flint, intent, 

certain in some cold burning that

you've been here before. Wrap me 

up in that, I like it. I like you a lot

small policeman. You are the icing

on the ocean- a dot! And when you're 
asleep I transcribe every breath,

golden crest, tiny bird, new entire.

Oh Hai canary, I see you

climb. If I were a mine then

you would come up singing

radical, a silver-edged

fresh yellow pipe with white

sound, pine moondial. & how

bird- magicked, our best trick,

are you glued only by light?

The years of feeding Twiglets

through neverending channels of

canvas, trying to make a home of

me, for you eggling. Now you spur

with courage, the burgeoning heat

of a bobbin. Don’t fret birdie,

we’ll spin our endless nest from

every better thing we ever did

and you can rest, quiet in your

pink terrarium. So, buffering in

your life pod, we’ll do for you,
and you will do for everything.

halloween comes at the best time,

a drip down your heart in a churn

of words called oof- this ghost-lit

bad brain hook on one withered hand it

scratches itself in a forest etc, christ

it’s racy. quick- resurface the jingling spit

says headless / sleepless- nobody

likes you. thanks ghoul! do keep me

posted i say, it is helpful to know where

i’m not. fake blood in the whisper chain,

the dithering rain- childless strings of

lights in tooth, static, pickaxe, how

do you do. deconstructed in laser sharp

glee- my ribcage a synth, fanning out hard

into the red of black trees. the umami runs
deep. pls help. i am above, i am nowhere.

Fred West’s Cardigan

The sun so vicious hot the tarmac burnt

the Spanish intern’s instep mid-Flamenco,

Fred. I searched for the long gone Youth Club-

right forgotten at the poetry festival, run

by this African Rifles vet called Ken. You probably

knew of him within the jungle din of rumbling bikes,

your gypsy looks and grin, the bramble hair, all that.

The girl that smacked you up the escape

on Bye Street to the Homend where kids
still skulk in stilts, too bored to grope and eating
hands by stalls of drizzle. Scrim, more bloody
melting tea under a scowl of weightless breasts,

the Milk Bar’s ghost where you met Rena.

Lassoed with dirty promise, a cavernous mouth

of bragging entire wildness, a sausage plait

of shame the poets hanker on. Refined; Can the

air be more rarefied do you think? Do you miss

the knife-sharp bunting? Would I put on your cardigan

in this God-forsaken heat, the woollen embrace of a

scrambled animal, pre-Rose, like rape- some home?

Some of those beetles are so shiny they look like tiny bits of glass

before the tide whipped them about in a washing machine

The honeysuckle is in tip-top condition, the smell is arguably better than

freshly cut grass, which everyone is always a fan of

There is a black thing in the tree, it is possibly an amputated leg cut neat

through the middle, tied around with string to keep the sock up

Out of the window a cat watches with burning eyes as the bells of an

ice-cream van shatter the air into a thousand wafers

Yearning for the sea-

something about a white boarded pod

and down the road a smokehouse

that wraps the fish in silence, dog.

If I were asked I might say it was hot

white horses, some crashing. A trip out

each day to the sweet shop to see Graveling

with the big old ears like bacon, how

do we get there. TV in the evenings and a

simple meal of Gothel, coke float.

High-stitched, I don’t much care.

It was your voice on the line, you unmet me.

Prying open my day like a mouth, you

muddied my pearl. I am not interested

in you and your lack of poetry,

don’t care for your aggregate view-

trying to squeeze your body into the hours

like a fat old foot, rushing for trains, moral

mathematics then skating on the surface

like some finely shanked bug.

I am not interested in hurting or filling your

silences with reupped words- I research

the most awful things. The sun opens a

cloud like a curious knife, the grass is

a various city, I don’t have time, I’m

aiming for the shore. The crunk of shingle

and the roseate cubes that shrink you,

targeted toward the gaggle of girls that

carve up sand and play in ribbons,

unwatched, there’s no display.

The games of the ardent bore me.

While on the tide we flutter- roaming

in wellies, in ourselves, out. Lost

to the deep we strain to conch

the loud black aches of a mermaid.

We have elders that are made of ash,

they try their best, they die, you came

like blood, gentle as a clay hut. You

grow up quick, the gods say no, say

off you go. We sail to boys, the soil,

the kids go round and soon they know

how short we come, how narrow- though

you must not ever think I do not love you.